I generally headcanon Loki as someone who has a very good and very sharp memory – maybe not exactly photographic, but he tends to remember things well and for a long time. (it’s part of what makes him so good at holding grudges.)
on the other hand, Loki also tends to be someone who focuses very much on the negative of things – for whom the bad sticks harder and much longer than the good. I’ve had Thor think multiple times in different fics about wishing Loki’s memory was a little less precise – and that’s usually in reference to the way Loki absorbs the things Thor says, the precise words he uses, and holds onto them. as someone who is – if not careless at least often less than careful with his language, and speaks from emotion sometimes without thinking of implication, that has consequences for the way Loki thinks about how Thor sees him.
so things like “imagined slights” and “you had her tricks, but I had her trust” and “know your place” – for Thor, they’re things he said once, spoke in anger or frustration or without thinking, or things he’s changed his mind about later, but for Loki they often become immutable truths.
in a lot of ways, Loki doesn’t think of anything as being “idle words.” even lies have meaning. and when it’s someone like Thor speaking, or Odin (“your birthright was to die”), who loom so large in Loki’s life and whose opinions are so important – that goes even more so. and post-facto it is very hard to dislodge that language or replace it.
It’s been three days since Loki began the attacks on Asgard. Fire rains from the nebulae but all he can do is run his fingers through the thin layer of dust in what was once his brother’s old chambers. But Thor is gone, and Loki is alone.
Loki is the Philosopher King 